Social Media

Follow on Twitter

Search Music Store

Click Poster to enlarge + link to feature

Donate to folking

We all give our spare time to run folking.com. Our aim has always been to keep folking a free service for our visitors, artists, PR agencies and tour promoters. If you wish help out and donate something (running costs currently funded by Darren Beech), please click the PayPal link below to send us a small one off payment or a monthly contribution.

Categories

Tag: Don’t Mess With Mrs Murphy

One half of The Westies alongside husband Michael McDermott, like him Horton also has a solo career, one which, aided and abetted by multi-instrumentalist Lex Price, she resumes here with her strongly feminist fuelled second album about women addressing the struggle of reconciling their multiple roles with the search for personal happiness which, she notes, frequently gets “placed on back burners and crammed into closets”.

A caution about falling in love with the wrong person, the breathily sung ‘Murphy’s Law’ opens the album with a dreamy, ripplingly hypnotic rhythm, the musical mood getting a little more spooked with ‘Wheelchair Man’, a disability rights song inspired by the disempowered and disenfranchised of Chicago on which she sings “I cannot stand ladders I will never get to climb corporate or just to pass the time/dreaming days to forge a golden gate/bridges only birds can navigate.”

‘Did You Feel That’ picks up the tempo for a poppier shuffle complete with a soaring radio friendly chorus only to take things back down again with the minimal, multi-tracked vocals of an almost hymnal ‘Save The Rain’, a song about her protecting daughter (Willie aka Rain) from the dangers of the world.

A Velvetsish slow walking bassline (and accompanying talk-sing musical sensibility) underpins the narcotic ‘Boomerang’, a song about her estranged adoptive father and the things you do coming back to bite you, while, addressing facing up to collective responsibility, the languorous country of ‘Flesh and Blood’ is another of the sparser mood moments.

If you’re wondering why the album’s not really mirrored the confrontational nature of the title, then welcome to ‘F.U.’, an amusing song on which, opening with the line ‘Jolene ain’t got nothing on you’, was inspired by a stalker who tried to steal her husband (”I find you backstage in stilettos and stockings and you pretend that it was me, that you came for. I give you a hug cuz I feel sorry for you/and you try to bite me/but I’m made of nickel”), but, coloured by some twangsome guitar, delivers its middle finger in a quietly warning way rather than snarling into your face.

The romantic six minute ‘Coffee Cup’ is another dreamily tranquil number, written as a response to ‘Say It’ by The Westies, it’s followed the reflective ‘Pauper Sky’, here in the original form of the song that (with an extra ‘s) appeared on the band’s last album.

It ends with the unhurried seven-minute mostly spoken narrative ‘I Wanna Die in My Sleep’, essentially a moving pledge of unconditional love and devotion to her husband accompanied by acoustic guitar and a touch of organ. It’s only right then to have a hidden bonus track, the two of them teaming up for a ramshackle acoustic cover of ‘You’re The One That I Want’. You might not want to mess with Mrs. Murphy, but you really should get to know Ms. Horton a lot better.

Mike Davies

If you would like to order a copy of an album (in CD or Vinyl format), download one or just listen to snippets of selected tracks (track previews are usually on the download page) then click below to be taken to our associated partner Amazon’s website.

Don’t Mess With Mrs Murphy is out in the UK on 1st September via At The Helm Records

You may already know Heather as singer, songwriter, fiddle player and one half of The Westies (the other half of which is her husband Michael McDermott). TheWesties, received vast, critical acclaim while the urgency for Horton to get back to her own roots, remained impending after putting her career on hold upon the birth of their child, Rain in 2010.

This record signifies Horton’s own re-birth and speaks for all women toiling and wrestling with the struggles attached to their multitude of roles, including guilt, denial and depression, in the midst of their own pursuit of happiness.

Horton has said that this record not only defines her, but screams out the layers of sadness, fear and euphoria she and the majority of women have “placed on back burners and crammed into closets”; all the while believing this place in all of time, to be the most important time for aggressive, unrelenting expression.

Horton re-enlisted sonic collaborator, Lex Price, to produce, engineer and mix the collection of eleven songs (including a hidden bonus) at The Collard Green and Resistor studios in Nashville, TN.

If you would like to order a copy of an album (in CD or Vinyl format), download one or just listen to snippets of selected tracks (track previews are usually on the download page) then click below to be taken to our associated partner Amazon’s website.